Clinton Foundation Cartoons

Clinton Foundation executive left 148 phone messages for Hillary Clinton's top aide

EXCLUSIVE: A senior executive at the Clinton Foundation left almost 150 telephone messages for Hillary Clinton’s top aide at the State Department within a two-year time frame, according to previously unpublished documents obtained by Fox News.
A review of State Department call logs for Cheryl Mills, the longtime Clinton confidant who served as chief of staff for the entirety of Clinton’s four-year tenure as America’s top diplomat, reflects at least 148 messages from Laura Graham – then the Clinton Foundation’s chief operating officer – between 2010 and 2012. No other individual or non-profit appears in the logs with anything like that frequency or volume, the review found.
One of the messages Graham left for Mills, in August 2011, referenced “our boss” – without further identifying that individual. Another, from January 2012, appeared to reference former President Clinton, using his initials: “Please call. WJC is looking for her [Graham] and she wants to talk to you before she talks to him.” 
The telephone records were released by the State Department to the conservative advocacy group Citizens United as part of a long-running lawsuit over the Freedom of information Act.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner said he could not provide “a read-out of every one of those messages or every one of those calls,” nor estimate how many of them were returned. But he acknowledged that Mills and Graham never shared the same boss and insisted the department “always” acted under Clinton to advance U.S. foreign policy interests, “with no other intent in mind beyond that.”
“Secretary Clinton's ethics agreement at the time [she assumed office] did not preclude other State Department officials from engaging with, or having contact with, the Clinton Foundation,” Toner said. 

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Absent additional detail, there is no evidence of any misconduct in the calls or contacts between Graham and Mills. But the records surfaced amid mounting questions about the relationship between the Clinton State Department and the Clinton foundation, and particularly about the role played by Mills.
“It's an amazing thing that the State Department spokesperson would actually make an argument,” said Citizens United President David Bossie, “that Hillary Clinton would be obligated under an ethics agreement that the White House made her sign with the foundation but her top employees would not be under that same agreement. I find it’s just very Clintonesque.”
Last week, the State Department acknowledged that in June 2012, Mills spent two days traveling to New York to interview job applicants at the foundation. The State Department said Mills “volunteered” to do so, but neither the department nor a spokesman for the Clinton presidential campaign, nor Mills’s attorney, would say whether Mills used annual leave or unpaid days to perform that work – or whether it was done on the taxpayers’ time. 
The call logs reflect a wide cross-section of individuals angling for the secretary’s ear, from celebrities like Sean Penn to elder statesmen of the Democratic Party like Vernon Jordan. The messages include a number averring to irksome home-renovation issues Mills was facing, and even one left by the chief of staff’s mother, who told her daughter, through the intermediary of a State Department secretary, in September 2011: “Please call. Hadn’t heard from you in so long and was wondering if you are out of town.”

Huma Abedin worked at a radical Muslim journal for a dozen years

Hillary's Best Bud.

Hillary Clinton’s top campaign aide, and the woman who might be the future White House chief of staff to the first female U.S. president, for a decade edited a radical Muslim publication that opposed women’s rights and blamed the US for 9/11.
One of Clinton’s biggest accomplishments listed on her campaign Web site is her support for the U.N. women’s conference in Bejing in 1995, when she famously declared, “Women’s rights are human rights.” Her speech has emerged as a focal point of her campaign, featured prominently in last month’s Morgan Freeman-narrated convention video introducing her as the Democratic nominee.
However, soon after that “historic and transformational” 1995 event, as Clinton recently described it, her top aide Huma Abedin published articles in a Saudi journal taking Clinton’s feminist platform apart, piece by piece. At the time, Abedin was assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs working under her mother, who remains editor-in-chief. She was also working in the White House as an intern for then-First Lady Clinton.

Donald Trump blasted top aide to Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedine’s husband Anthony Weiner on Monday calling him a “pervert sleaze.”

Appearing on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends,” co-host Brian Kilmeade asked Trump to comment on the report that Clinton’s aide Huma Abedine wrote for the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, which has a message that is as “anti-woman as you can get.” The report notes that Abedine’s mother is the editor and that in 2002, the journal wrote that the US was to blame for the 9/11 attack.
Kilmeade noted that the Clinton campaign said that Abedine’s name was “just on there. She didn’t really do anything. She had ‘no formal role’… [at] the radical Muslim journal.”
Trump responded, “You know it’s interesting because of course that’s terrible. And it shouldn’t happen. It’s a lie, another lie that they tell. But what about the fact that Huma Abedin who knows every single thing about Hillary Clinton — she knows more about Hillary than Hillary knows and she’s married to a pervert sleaze named Anthony Weiner who will send anything that he has out over Twitter or any other form of getting it out.”

Latinos turning Republican stronghold Arizona into shades of purple

Carmen Maldonado, a Mexican-American, has proudly voted for the Republican presidential candidate since former president George W. Bush ran for re-election in 2004.
The 55-year-old grandmother is a staunch Catholic who considers herself strongly pro-life, and pro-military. She decorates her home with American flags and lives with her husband, Vince, a former gold glove boxer, on their ranch in the Arizona desert.
This year, for the first time in years, she is leaning toward voting for the Democrat in the presidential race, even though she is not eager to do so. She said she is “sorry to say” she will support Hillary Clinton this November.
"I am very undecided" She added with a sigh. "Gosh, I can't remember the last time I voted Democrat."
Arizona, once a fortified stronghold for the Republican Party, a border state that spawned the candidacies of conservative Republican nominees like Senators Barry Goldwater and John McCain, is turning from shades of deep red to purple, to perhaps, even blue, according to recent polls that show a close race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. 
The growing Latino voter demographic has been a major reason why Arizona is turning into a surprising potential pick up for Hillary Clinton this November, experts say. Hispanics now make up 30.5 percent of the population, with a whopping 21 percent being eligible to vote, according to Pew Research statistics.
And to many Latinos in the Grand Canyon state, both Democratic and Republican, the reason behind their surging interest in the presidential election is the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, who many perceive as anti-Hispanic.
"Everything that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth is against everything I believe in," Maldonado says. "He brings out all the negativity in people."
Patricia Beckley, also 55, who is Mexican-American and a registered Republican, tells Fox News Latino that she is also undecided because she has serious reservations about Trump.
"I don't like his views," Beckley says." There is a lot of division with him and the in the things that he says, and I am not sure we want him as our leader."
Hispanic voters in the desert have been mobilized to vote. During the March primary, a record 600,000 votes were cast in the Phoenix-area alone – almost double the amount in 2012.
The last time Arizona went for a Democrat candidate another Clinton was running for president: Bill Clinton in 1996.
But a lot has happened in Arizona since then. It is now known for one of the most stringent immigration laws in the country, called SB1070, and for one of the strictest implementers of the laws, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, an avid Trump supporter.
According to members of the Clinton campaign, efforts to win Arizona have increased recently with a new push to pull in Latino voters following recent polls that show Clinton in a dead heat with Trump.
A CBS poll earlier this month has Trump at 44 percent, with Clinton only 2 points behind him at 42 percent.
Publicly, the Clinton campaign says Arizona is part of a 50-state strategy. But the fact that one of the most fervent Republican bastions of support like Arizona and Georgia may flip has many Democrats excited.
“We’re bullish on Arizona, but we’re not taking anything for granted," Walter Garcia, Western Regional Communications Director for the Democratic National Committee told Fox News Latino. “We’re going to work hard to hold Donald Trump accountable for his divisive and dangerous rhetoric."
"We are running a 50-state strategy, including Arizona, and that includes engaging with Latino communities in every state to show the contrast between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump," Lorella Praeli, the head of the Latino vote operation for Hillary for America tells Fox News Latino."  Hillary Clinton has spoken directly to Latinos, laying out an agenda that will create good-paying jobs and pass comprehensive immigration reform to keep families together. This stands in stark contrast to Donald Trump's offensive rhetoric and policies that would rip families apart."
Republicans in Arizona are not ceding any ground, and point to a GOP sweep in 11 statewide elections as evidence that the Republican grassroots operations runs deep. Trump met with Hispanic leaders this past weekend to figure out ways to engage the Latino community.
"We never take anything for granted," said Arizona GOP spokesman Tim Sifert. "We take every election seriously and we know every election is going to be different but we are pretty confident."
When asked about Trump’s chances in Arizona, Sifert said: "I would characterize it as cautiously optimistic."
"He is an unconventional candidate, so as a political scientist it can be frustrating to try to rely on your traditional measurement tools because Donald Trump is such an untraditional and unconventional candidate," Sifert said.
"He has been very disruptive and we think that is a positive thing, and we think that the think the voters think that is a positive thing in Arizona."

Trump calls for special prosecutor to look at Clinton Foundation, clarifies immigration stance

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called for an “expedited investigation” by a special prosecutor into “pay-to-play” accusations involving the Clinton Foundation while reiterating on Monday he plans to have a “firm, but fair” stance on illegal immigration.
“The Clintons' made the State Department into the same kind of Pay-to-Play operations as the Arkansas Government was: pay the Clinton Foundation huge sums of money and throw in some big speaking fees for Bill Clinton and you got to play with the State Department,” Trump said at a campaign rally Monday night in Akron, Ohio.
“The amounts involved, the favors done, the significant amount of time, require an expedited investigation by a special prosecutor immediately, immediately,” he added.
Trump also called the investigation by the FBI and Justice Department into Clinton’s private email server a “whitewash,” and said that the two agencies “cannot be trusted to quickly or impartially investigate Hillary Clinton’s crimes.”
The billionaire businessman also expanded on earlier comments he made in the day on “Fox and Friends” about being “fair, but firm” on illegal immigration in an interview on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.”
"I just want to follow the law,” he told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly.

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"The first thing we're gonna do, if and when I win, is we're gonna get rid of all of the bad ones. We've got gang members, we have killers, we have a lot of bad people that have to get out of this country. We're gonna get them out," he said.
"As far as everybody else, we're going to go through the process," he said, while citing the policies of President Obama and former President George W. Bush as examples.
“I’m going to do the same thing. We’re going to do it in a humane manor,” Trump said, adding that the “bad ones” are known by law enforcement.
Asked whether Trump's plan still included a deportation force, his new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said Sunday it was "to be determined."
"Even Sen. Jeff Sessions," a hard-liner on immigration, "he doesn't deport 11 million people in his plan," Conway said on CNBC.
Trump had been scheduled to deliver a speech on the topic Thursday in Colorado, but has postponed it.
There have been signs for weeks now that Trump may be shifting course. Hispanic business and religious leaders who would like to see Trump move in a more inclusive direction have reported closed-door conversations with Trump in which they say he has signaled possibly embracing a less punitive immigration policy that focuses on "compassion" along with the rule of law.
At last month's GOP convention, the Republican National Committee's director of Hispanic communications, Helen Aguirre Ferre, told reporters at a Spanish-language briefing that Trump had already said he "will not do massive deportations" — despite the fact that Trump had never said so publicly.
Instead, Aguirre Ferre said, "he will focus on removing the violent undocumented who have criminal records and live in the country."
Indeed, Trump's first television ad of the general election specifically singles out illegal immigrants with criminal records, claiming that, if Clinton is elected, "Illegal immigrants convicted of committing crimes get to stay."
Trump's campaign has pushed back on the notion that he's reversing course. "Mr. Trump said nothing today that he hasn't said many times before, including in his convention speech," rapid response director Steven Cheung said after the meeting.

John Soros Billionaire Cartoons

Obama eyes busy fall after return from summer vacation

WASHINGTON –  President Barack Obama returned from vacation Sunday, ready for a busy fall season and more battles with Congress over Zika funding, the federal budget and $400 million the administration paid Iran this year for the never-completed sale of military equipment.
Obama is also expected to campaign doggedly throughout October to help elect Democrat Hillary Clinton as president.
A theoretically rested president returned to the White House after a 16-day getaway to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, with his wife, Michelle, daughters Malia and Sasha, and their dogs. He played 10 rounds of golf and went out to dinner eight times.
Throughout Sunday, scores of residents lined roads to watch and wave as the motorcade crisscrossed the island on the last day of Obama's final vacation there as president. Signs posted around the island's various towns thanked the family for coming.
Obama will be at the White House for about a day before hitting the road again Tuesday to survey damage from heavy flooding in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that killed at least 13 people and displaced thousands more.
The president had resisted pressure from Louisianans and others to interrupt his vacation to go meet with officials and flood victims, and the White House stressed that he was receiving regular briefings on the flooding during the vacation. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump filled the void created by Obama's absence, touring the ravaged area Friday with his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.
With Congress still on a seven-week break, Obama and aides probably will focus on what the White House can get from lawmakers before they leave town to campaign for re-election. Congress returns after Labor Day, and the House and Senate will have just a month to pass a catch-all spending bill by the end of the federal budget year on Sept. 30 to keep the government operating.
Lawmakers plan to leave Washington again in October and not return until after the Nov. 8 elections.
The White House will continue to push for money to help keep the mosquito-borne Zika virus from spreading and develop a vaccine. Florida last week identified the popular Miami tourist haven of South Beach as the second site of Zika transmission on the U.S. mainland. A section of Miami's Wynwood arts district was the first.
Obama asked Congress for $1.9 billion this year for Zika prevention. Republicans offered $1.1 billion and added provisions Democrats objected to, including language on Planned Parenthood, leaving the matter in limbo before Congress adjourned in mid-July. Lawmakers could end up adding Zika money to the broader spending bill.
In turn, incensed lawmakers have promised to keep the heat on the administration over $400 million it delivered to Iran in January. Republicans say the money was ransom to win freedom for four Americans held in Iran. Questioned about the payment earlier this month, Obama said: "We do not pay ransom. We didn't here. And we ... won't in the future."
The president and other officials denied any linkage. But administration officials also said it made little sense not to "retain maximum leverage," as State Department spokesman John Kirby put it last week, for the money long owed to Iran, to ensure the U.S. citizens' release, given uncertainty about whether Iran would keep its promise to free them the day the money was to be delivered.
Iran had paid $400 million in the 1970s for U.S. military equipment, but the Iranian government was overthrown and the equipment wasn't delivered.
The explanations have not satisfied critics in and out of Congress. Trump has begun telling supporters at his campaign rallies that Obama "openly and blatantly" lied about the prisoners. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Obama has set a "dangerous precedent" and owes the public a "full accounting of his actions."
Obama heads into the fall, and what's expected to be a dogged effort on his part to boost Clinton to the White House, in improved public standing, according to the Pew Research Center.
His job approval rating stands at 53 percent, about the same as just before July's political conventions. But Obama's standing among independent voters has reached positive territory for the first time since December 2012. Fifty-three percent of independents approve of Obama's job performance, the center found, while 40 percent disapprove. Independents had split 46 percent to 46 percent on the question in June.
Obama won't spend much time at the White House in the coming weeks.
After visiting Louisiana, the president heads to Nevada on Aug. 31 to discuss environmental protection at the Lake Tahoe Summit. He follows with a trip to China and Laos from Sept. 2-9.

Latest fed reports show Democratic donors step up efforts on Senate, Clinton bids

Democratic mega-donors, including George Soros and Tom Steyer, are putting millions of dollars into efforts to put Hillary Clinton in the White House and win control of the Senate.
Their investment comes as Republicans worry about not only the chances of their nominee Donald Trump, but also his effect on down-ballot races.
Yet few of the GOP's biggest donors have put major money into Trump efforts, a striking change from four years ago when Mitt Romney had more million-dollar donors on his side than did President Barack Obama. They're also not rushing to help save the Senate, based on the July reports from GOP super PACs.
The presidential candidates and many outside groups detailed their July fundraising and spending to the Federal Election Commission on Saturday. Here are some highlights:

SOROS RETURNS
Billionaire after billionaire appeared on the latest fundraising reports from Democratic super PACs.

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Super political action committees face no restrictions on how much money they can take from individual, corporate and union donors. Liberals have decried these groups as bad for democracy -- yet they've leaned on them to help win races, saying they don't want to disarm against Republicans.
In July alone, Soros, a New York hedge fund billionaire, gave $1.5 million to Planned Parenthood's super PAC and $35,000 to Priorities USA, both working to elect Clinton, as well as $500,000 to the Senate Majority PAC. Other million-dollar donors to Priorities USA include the creator of diet product Slim-Fast, Daniel Abraham, and Donald Sussman, a financier who is divorcing Maine Rep. Chellie Pingree.
Soros's latest contributions bring his 2015-2016 super PAC total to more than $14 million -- a fivefold increase from his super PAC investments during the previous presidential election.
BILLIONAIRE EFFORTS
Across the country, California Steyer, also a hedge fund billionaire, is feeling similarly generous.
Last month, he pumped another $7 million into his super PAC, called NextGen Climate Action Committee. In the past two years, he has put into $38 million into the group, which works to defeat politicians who don't believe in human-caused climate change.
NextGen also is spending heavily to help Clinton, including by giving millions of dollars to labor union super PACs that back her.
Another billionaire with his own super PAC, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, gave $5 million in July. The group, called Independence USA, backs candidates who want stricter gun control measures.
Although that often means championing Democrats, the super PAC recently began spending to help Republican Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey retain his seat in a tough contest. Bloomberg praised Toomey's support of expanding background checks as his chief motivation for doing so.
Bloomberg has also endorsed Clinton.
DAD BOOSTS SENATE BID
The Senate Majority PAC, a group with ties to Minority Leader Harry Reid, netted $7.3 million in July -- its best fundraising yet this year. One of its top donors was Thomas Murphy, a Florida construction executive whose son Patrick Murphy is likely to face off with Republican Sen. Marco Rubio.
The younger Murphy is a Democratic representative who had worked with his family's company before being elected to office.
Other $1 million donors to Senate Majority PAC were the Greater New York Hospital Association Management Corporation, a network of heath care facilities in the northeast, and the Laborers' International Union of North America.
On the Republican side, the Freedom Partners Action Fund is typically among the biggest groups spending in Senate races. In July, it counted a single donor, hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer. He gave $1 million.
Freedom Partners is one of many political and policy groups steered by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, who are uncomfortable with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and have decided to concentrate on down-ballot races. Likewise, Singer is not a Trump backer.
Singer also gave $1 million in July to the Republican-backing Senate Leadership Fund. He was joined by Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus.
The contributions of those two men accounted for about 80 percent of the super PAC's July fundraising -- a sign that the numerous GOP donors on the sidelines in the presidential campaign aren't all moving their money down ballot, as some had predicted.
TRUMP HELPERS
A pro-Trump group called Great America PAC landed its biggest contribution yet in July, $100,000 from billionaire Charles Johnson, a backer of vanquished GOP Trump opponent Jeb Bush and owner of the San Francisco Giants. Great America PAC has spent about $2 million on Trump-themed ads, most of which are aimed at getting viewers to call in to pledge money to the group.
Another Trump group, Make America Number 1, is funded exclusively by hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, new filings show. He gave the group $2 million in July, making him Trump's most generous supporter yet. Mercer was a major funder of Ted Cruz, Trump's toughest opponent in the long primary race.
Mercer's impact on Trump is evident: Not only is he a super PAC donor, but he also funds Breitbart News, whose leader Stephen Bannon became the campaign's chief executive officer this week, and Cambridge Analytica, a data company now doing business with the campaign.
PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES INCREASE SPENDING
Trump and Clinton accelerated their campaign spending last month, though the Republican did so far more dramatically.
New campaign documents show Trump's campaign spent $18.5 million in July, more than double its expenditures a month earlier. Still, that's far short of the $38 million Clinton's campaign spent last month. In June, her campaign had spent about $34 million.
Clinton can afford to spend more: Her campaign brought in more than $52 million in July, compared to the roughly $37 million the Trump campaign netted. That amount includes a $2 million donation from Trump himself.
Clinton's report shows her campaign's work to bring small donors into the fold is paying off. Her Democratic primary rival, Bernie Sanders, had strong appeal online and had routinely trounced her on the small-money front. In July, contributors giving $200 or less accounted for $11.4 million of Clinton's fundraising -- roughly double the amount they gave her in June.
But even having raised less than Clinton overall, Trump outpaced her when it comes to small donors. Contributors giving $200 accounted for $12.7 million of his campaign fundraising.